Prayer for a  childhood friend she is in heart failure and will be going in for a heart procedure on the 25th.

Hi, all!  Just in case you are interested, here is a link to the latest video from the John 10:10 Project:

https://thejohn1010project.com/video/the...ng-breeze/

Although many of the videos are "religious" per se, there are many that are wonderful to watch in order to learn more about the natural world that Our Creator made.  I've learned a lot!

Around 2008 I entered my existential crises that eventually brought me back on the path of repentance and submission to God. A big part of that was the realization that nearly everything we've been taught and told about nearly everything is deception and lies. 

My path back to following the Lord Jesus started as what I called my "commitment to reality". This led me to studying post modernisms war on "objective reality" and learning a little bit more about philosophy, epistemology etc. Trying to organize my thoughts. This caused me great distress and drove me back to the scripture and the anchor that is steadfast and sure. Increasingly I'm trying to view everything through the filter of the biblical cosmology/unseen realm/ANE context of scripture.

I have to admit I'm a little uncomfortable with the level skepticism about "everything" that this path has engendered. I'm also a little uncomfortable with the idea that there is no objective reality I can really know. 

I'd like to think the reason I repented and submitted is in part because the biblical story coheres with the observable reality that exists outside just my experience of reality. A faith in real events that happened in real time that when believed draw you deeper into the truth ie reality. 

There is a question in there, I just cannot seem to articulate it though. Any thoughts on this rambling?

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

My mothers nursing facility is next to a nature preserve. Grabbed my camera and took a walk the other morning.                    

Brothers and Sister,

As I mentioned in my introduction, I recently found out that the extreme pain I was working through was caused by a hernia. I thought it was a low back issue until I saw it and there is no doubt. I have a ultrasound scheduled for the 10th and the consult with the surgeon is on the 15th.

The rub is that I just started working at my current company a month ago. It is the best company to weld for in this area...by far. My insurance just kicked in last week, but my company has a policy that new hires will be terminated if they miss 3 days of work in their first 90 days. I have no idea how far out my surgery to repair the hernia will be, but if I want to keep my insurance to pay for it, then I have to keep working until the surgery.

I will be fired after the surgery because I will be required to stay off my feet a lot for several weeks to recover (they recommend 4 to 6 weeks if you work in manufacturing, which most people who do cannot afford to take that much time off!). I know that my company will hire me back after I am terminated, but they have another policy that people who have been terminated cannot reapply for a minimum of 6 months.

We will be okay financially however this works out, I just do not have any clear direction on this situation. I will try to keep working with the hernia and got a belt that does hold it in, although it has not been tested in battle conditions, which will start with my shift tomorrow because I had all of last week off, thank God. Please pray that the Lord will strengthen me to work with this condition and that he will give us direction in this matter.

Thank you all so much, and I will keep you posted on the situation in this thread,

Blessings,

JP

I'm convinced that Paul foresaw the West in some sense. I believe he and other apostles could discern the dark plans of Satan and his allies to create a culture that would pervert the gospel and mask his evil work. The most dangerous lie is the one that stands very close to the truth and makes them difficult to distinguish yet changes one critical important part.

He refers to "last days" not so much as a portion of time but is pointing to a condition. After the final revelation in Christ, we enter a situation in which the forces of Darkness realize what they are up against, having finally understood the Lord's plan. Their actions will be aimed at keeping everyone out of the Covenant. Thus, they will work overtime tempting people in ways they never did before.

Paul describes what kind of society our Enemy wants to create. It turns out that such people had already begun to show up around churches. They were of a type, predators who took advantage of primary charitable nature of Christian communities. A mainstay of faith community from before the time of Jesus were women of means, such as the one who funded the ministry of Jesus and the first century churches. This is what the predators considered the easiest prey, using appeals to vanity and offering them privileged insider knowledge in return for a share of that funding that supported churches.

These women existed because in that world, the average woman was a decade or two younger than her husband. It was entirely natural that there should be widows everywhere, and a significant number were left wealthy and alone. They would often go looking for some charitable cause to support, and no one was surprised that they would support churches, even when they never really understood the gospel message. That they were willing to follow an apostle's teaching also made them vulnerable to false teaching, particularly the kind of garbage the Judaizers and Gnostics cooked up.

These men were in the same class as two mythical Egyptian magicians alleged to have opposed Moses during his visit to Pharaoh's courts. Second Temple literature refers to them and it was common knowledge among Jews and many in the early churches. The tales indicate they were fully aware of the prophecies about Israel and were determined to prevent God's promises by plotting to attack the human frailties of Moses and Aaron, having consulted with demons. Paul is suggesting that the Judaizers, at least, were plotting to keep the Christians enslaved to the Talmud just as the Egyptians sought to keep Israel enslaved to Pharaoh. Their motives and methods are just as transparent.

By contrast, Timothy was there to witness Paul's endurance in faith against all the attacks. Recall that Timothy was from Lystra, where Paul was stoned and presumed dead. Persecution is the native element of those who follow Christ, since it was His final victory.

Furthermore, Timothy knew the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures as Jesus taught them. The basic principle by which one judges what constitutes Scripture was the ultimate source. God raised up men who would be able to hear His Word of truth and communicate that to those seeking to receive it. Such revelation was the standard for everyone seeking peace with God and would be the test of who should be granted a hearing in the churches.

Note: this is a mirror of a post of the same title from my personal blog.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

From our front yard, as seen when we got home from Starbucks.

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